Friday, May 12, 2017

Weekend Design Challenge 051217—Hour of Devastation mechanics

Click
through to see the design requirements for your
single card submission, due Monday morning. Every submission warrants
feedback, which you may use to revise your submission any number of
times. I will aim to review the most recent submission from each
designer.

Design a card for Hour of Devastation featuring a twist on an Amonkhet mechanic, or a new mechanic designed to play well and offer new context.

Disbelieve is exploit, but 'costs' you no mana and can pitch lands (and other non-creatures). It doesn't trigger revolt, but it does enable madness and discard-matters. Sounds fun. (And while discarding still isn't appealing to new players, they'll quickly see discarding excess land is great.)

I'm not sure a set with cycling also needs disbelieve, but otherwise this feels perfect for Hour of Devastation. I suspect 7 life is too mch for Anh-Crop Doubter, but that's a Dev concern; the design is solid.

Wrap in SilkUInstant - UncommonExile target creature. It's controller puts a token copy of it onto the battlefield with no mana cost that's white and a Zombie in addition to its other types.Afterlife - If there are 5 or more cards in exile, scry 2.

In the current set it does, but I was concerned about Delve, Ingest, etc. Probably if the effects aren't super swingy you could make it 2. Note that it is global, so once it's on, it's on for everyone, and due to the nature of Exile, it's likely on for good. That's what I thought made it a little unique and different from normal threshold mechanics

When I first read this I thought it was an insanely efficient reanimation spell. It reads so similar to embalm that I'm a bit worried new players would also read it that way and it would create a feel bad moment when they're corrected.

Afterlife is threshold for exile. In general, that's a poor plan because the game doesn't put anything into exile naturally, only specific cards do. We can make an exception for a set that enables exile, like Battle for Zendikar. Amonkhet does exile via aftermath and embalm so caring about it is possible.

Afterlife also differs from threshold because it cares about your exile zone and your opponent's. This is likely a mistake, because it removes focus for the player and identity for the mechanic.

Choosing between "N cards in your exile zone" and "N cards in an opponent's exile zone," the former plays more distinctly from the Eldrazi processors, and rewards a player for using the set's other mechanics; the latter relies on your opponent's deck and punishes players for using the set's other mechanics. I'd got with the former.

Wrap in Silk is a strange card (but not too strange for uncommon), mostly either acting as a flicker effect or negating an opposing embalm. I'm not sure why the kicked version lets you scry; I guess because you want card selection while you stall?

Exaughsted Guard 1WCreature - Human Soldier - CommonForsaken (at the beginning of your upkeep you may sacrifice this creature. If you do, draw a card.)2/2

I imagine an hour of devestation in amonkhet would involve a lot of surrender - excluding our gatewatch buddies. There will undoubtedly be victims of hopeless-ness. FORSAKEN allows you to trade up a useless resource for the potential of another, more useful, resource.

Forsaken doesn't interact with any of the block's existing mechanics in gameplay. It draws a resemblance to exert and cycling, but it's not serving a mechanical purpose either of them isn't, and its addition doesn't add new meaning to those mechanics. I agree the flavor can work, but I'd definitely save this keyword for another set.

Accursed Redeemed 1BW Creature - Zombie Cleric RareLifelink, Deathtouch.Afterlife - As long as this card is on your graveyard, zombies you control have lifelink and deathtouch.3/1

I would love to see the Wonder static enchantmentlike effects of oddisey coming back in an speccial kind of keyword.Becouse of this being a word ability, it could shif drastically between different raritys. But I think that being always statics would make it more coesive.

Afterlife provides an ability word for the mechanic from the Wonder cycle. A significant difference is that afterlife doesn't care whether your deck is playing lands that could cast the card. You could easily play all the afterlife cards in a deck that mills itself, with no intention of casting them (though you likely wouldn't do that without some way to loot them out of your hand too).

It's been a very long time since we've seen this mechanic, and it is attractive. I just don't know how much design space there is for it. We could surely make a new rare cycle, but is that worth giving an ability word? I don't believe we can put afterlife on commons, and while uncommon could work, I don't think we can make more than 6 or so, just because the number of options is so limited.

Putting both lifelink and deathtouch and Accursed Redeemed, means we're either making a tight five-card two-color cycle and the WR card also grants lifelink and the BG card also grants deathtouch, or we're just eating up the precious few evergreen keywords we've got.

We could also just make this one-off WB rare, and that might be quite fun, but we wouldn't name the ability word in that case.

Sandsworn Deliverance 3UEnchantment (r)When a creature becomes tapped, its controller may exert it. If they do, they may scry X, where X is that creature’s power. (An exerted creature won’t untap during its next untap step.)3U: Tap target creature.

Scarab-Hewn Sufferer uses exert in a new way: Instead of being an option when you attack, you can only do it when the creature ETBs, preventing you from attacking with it for a turn more than usual. That's simple and relevant; Not quite as fun as attacking, but easily worth making.

Scarab-Hewn Sufferer is quite good, as a 2/3 for three, that can exert into Assassinate, but certainly not better than Nekrataal.

Nice.

(One thought I had about this challenge was using exert as a kicker cost for spells.)

My sense is this isn't quite how the story will go, but that's far too hazy and subjective, so let's say it is.

Cartouche of Weakness does flip a cycle of cards on its head, turning expressly self-positive cards into expressly offensive cards. It's nice that they still trigger your trials (but that raises big story questions).

Cartouche of Weakness might be too much the mirror of Cartouche of Strength, not because mirrors are bad, but because this aura will die immediately when you're not just just desperately weakening some dominating threat, and that't not what auras are for.

Bolas's Disdain 1UUInstantCounter target spell.Spellcycling 2 (2, discard this card: reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal a nonland card. Put that card into your hand. Put the other revealed cards into your graveyard.)

Spellcycling would indeed be a valid and attractive new tweak on cycling, but it's a problem that plainscycling, basic land cycling, and wizard cycling don't work this way: They are search effects rather than reveal-until. They probably shouldn't be, but the precedent is nonetheless set.

Ignoring that, I like spellcycling a lot. Bolas's Disdain seems too strong to be uncommon. Maybe okay at rare?

Didn't want to clog this with too many submissions, but my other idea was hitting the old Urza's Destiny "cycle from play" creatures with a little more flavor, and triggering the discard-or-cycle cards. In its simplest iteration, without a named keyword:

Judgment Seeker 1RCreature2: Return CARDNAME to your hand, then discard a card and draw a card. Activate this only as a sorcery.2/1

My best guess is this is too strong with madness & delirium, but it's a fun "judge me worthy!" flavor alongside mechanical smoothing.

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We met as competitors and collaborators in the second Great Designer Search. After the contest was over, we decided we still had things to say about designing Magic: the Gathering. So we started a blog.